The Issue
Certain ARIA roles applied to elements must contain specific child elements and roles. When these required children are missing, the ARIA roles cannot perform their intended accessibility functions.
Why This Matters for Accessibility
For each ARIA role, the W3C's WAI-ARIA specification defines which child roles and parent roles are allowable or required. Assistive technologies rely on these required parent/child relationships to convey contextual information to users. For example, a tree item role must provide information about its container and siblings so users understand where it exists in the overall tree structure. This context can be provided through the underlying DOM structure or supplemental ARIA attributes like aria-owns when the code structure differs from the visual presentation. When elements with ARIA roles lack their required child roles, assistive technologies cannot build these critical contextual relationships to pass along to users.
How to Resolve This Issue
- Ensure elements with explicit or implicit ARIA roles contain the required child roles defined for that parent role in the WAI-ARIA specification. Pay particular attention to the following attributes that indicate relationships:
- `aria-activedescendant`
- `aria-controls`
- `aria-describedby`
- `aria-flowto`
- `aria-labelledby`
- `aria-owns`
- `aria-posinset`
- `aria-setsize`
- Role `combobox`
Learn More
Deque University provides extensive training to help you master web accessibility. Relevant online courses include:
The W3C also has additional details on the ARIA Roles Model.
Review the full list of automated accessibility rule checks for additional ways to identify and resolve common accessibility issues.